If you are thinking of having your DNA or a relative’s DNA tested, now is a good time. In fact, it is also a good time to obtain a “second opinion” to compare against a previous DNA test you took and whose findings are questionable in your mind.

MyHeritage (the sponsor of this newsletter) has started a Hot DNA Sale in the US and worldwide which will run through August 20th. The price of a DNA kit sent to a US address is ONLY $69 and includes free standard shipping if you order two or more kits. Similar price reductions are available in many other countries around the world.

The following announcement was written by the organizers of the Unlock the Past genealogy conferences and cruises:

Announcing Unlock the Past in Seattle LIVESTREAM with Blaine Bettinger and Maurice Gleeson

Adelaide, South Australia, 14 August 2018 – Unlock the Past Cruises announces that the Unlock the Past in Seattle full-day two-stream conference (previously announced) will now also be available to watch live online – and for a limited time after as a series of 10 recorded webinars.

FamilySearch and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. announced today the entire collection of Ellis Island New York Passenger Arrival Lists from 1820 to 1957 are now available online on both websites giving the opportunity to the descendants of over 100 million arrivals to discover their ancestors quicker and free of charge.

Originally preserved on microfilm, 9.3 million images of historical New York passenger records spanning 130 years were digitized and indexed in a massive effort by 165,590 online FamilySearch volunteers. The result is a free searchable online database containing 63.7 million names, including immigrants, crew, and other passengers traveling to and from the United States through the nation’s largest port of entry.

The following announcement was written by the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE):

The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors is proud to announce the winners of the Excellence-in-Writing Competition. All entries were exceptional this year. Submission details for 2019 will be announced soon. For any questions on the competition, email competition@isfhwe.org.

Please note there were not many submissions this year; some categories are not even represented. We hope next year you will consider submitting and showcasing your writing skills.

The following press release was written by the South Dakota Historical Society:

PIERRE — The South Dakota State Historical Society-Archives in Pierre was awarded a third round of grant funding in the amount of $280,200 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue digitizing historical newspapers.

The project is part of Chronicling America, a Library of Congress initiative to develop an online database of select historical newspapers from around the United States. As part of the grant the State Historical Society-Archives will digitize approximately 100 rolls of microfilmed newspapers pre-dating 1922 over two years.

NOTE:This article may appear to be unrelated to either genealogy or history. However, some genealogy software is released as Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) and a number of questions about such software have been posted to the discussion board on the newsletter’s web site in recent weeks. I thought a short article explaining the term might help others who have not yet asked “What is FOSS?”

Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) is exactly that: FREE. However, not all free software qualifies as open source.

I will classify free software into four groups. The first three are considered to be proprietary software. That is, the producing organization does not allow else to see the source code of the software the programmers created. The source code is private, or proprietary, information that only the employees of the producing organization are allowed to see.

1. Ad-supported free software

Free software is proprietary software that might be something created by a corporation or a non-profit organization and may contain advertising that promotes the products or services of that organization or perhaps purchase something from one their advertisers that pay to have advertising inserted into the free software. The producing company does not make the source code of the program public, however. You have to hope and trust that the free software does not contain viruses, trojan horse software, or other malware (malevolent software) that might steal your credit card information or bank account credentials or something similar. Facebook is perhaps the best-known free software that contains advertising.

The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, contains the largest genealogy collection of any publicly-owned genealogy in the U.S. It is also one of the largest research collections available anywhere, incorporating records from around the world. Thousands of genealogists travel to Fort Wayne every year to take advantage of the resources available in this unique collection. While in the city, these same genealogists obviously spend millions of dollars at local businesses, including hotels, restaurants, and more. The money spent by genealogists are an immense help for local business people.

Now Fort Wayne City Councilman Jason Arp has proposed cutting the budget of the Allen County Public Library to the point that it will no longer be able to sustain itself. Arp recently proposed to eliminate Allen County’s business personal property tax. Arp suggests that Amazon should and could replace libraries, thus saving taxpayers money.

Search over 1,000 records to learn more about the Irish officers who died in the First World War. Discover where and when an officer died, as well as the cause of death. You may also uncover details of an officer’s family and pre-war life.

Originally published in 1916 as Our Heroes, this book covered the period August 1914 to July 1916. It contained photographs, with biographical notes, of officers of Irish regiments and Irish officers of British regiments who had fallen in action, or who had been mentioned for Distinguished Conduct. Also included in this volume is a brief history of the chief events of the Great War (to July 1916) in which Irish regiments were engaged.

The New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project (NJDNP) has received an additional round of funding in the amount of $219,609 to digitize historical New Jersey newspapers and make them available to the public via the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America website, the National Endowment for the Humanities has announced. The NJDNP—a collaboration between Rutgers University Libraries, the New Jersey State Archives, and the New Jersey State Library—is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a long-term effort to develop a searchable online database of U.S. newspapers from all 50 states.

Since the New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project began in 2016, over 100,000 pages of historical newspapers have been scanned and digitized from microfilm originally held by the New Jersey State Archives.

With a new $280,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the Office of Secretary of (Washington) State Kim Wyman will break fresh ground in its nationally-recognized project of digitizing historic newspapers. The grant, announced August 8, will enable the Washington State Library’s Washington Digital Newspaper Project to add 100,000 pages of culturally and historically significant newspapers from Asian-American, African-American, and World War II-era publications to its free public archives.

The Washington Digital Newspaper Project is one of only four Washington projects selected for the first awards of the new Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grant program, which announced $43.1 million in awards for 218 projects nationwide.

One family with origins in Ewing, Virginia, just east of the state’s mountainous meeting point with Kentucky and Tennessee seem to suffer from a medical condition they knew as cancer of the throat. They lost the ability to chew, swallow, and speak, they lost weight, and then they died. A doctor recognized it as something else: ALS. The medical condition also is often called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

NOTE: ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. As this area degenerates, it leads to scarring or hardening (“sclerosis”) in the region.

ALS often is inherited, passed on from one generation to another within a family. However, not everyone within the family develops ALS. By the time the symptoms are apparent, it is normally too late to slow down the disease.

The following announcement was written by Library and Archives Canada:

August 8, 1918, is commonly known as the beginning of “Canada’s 100 Days” — when the Canadian Corps spearheaded attacks that became known as the Battle of Amiens, a major turning point that led to victory in the Great War and the Armistice of November 11.

42nd Battalion resting in the Grand Place, Mons, on the morning of the 11th november, 1918

To mark the centennial of the end of the First World War and the heroic and tragic events that led up to it, we are pleased to announce the completion of the digitization of all Canadian military personnel records from the Great War.

FamilySearch has given a great gift this week for those with Italian ancestry from Palermo and Chieti, Italy–almost 8 million new images of birth, marriage, and death records from 1809-1947. This week’s records also include Sweden, Peru, Hungary, and BillionGraves.

Research these new free records by clicking on the collection links below, or go to FamilySearch to search over 8 billion free names and record images.

A few weeks ago, I reported a Virginia federal court decision that finding a photo on the Internet and then using it without permission on a commercial website can be considered fair use. The decision is controversial, is not a landmark ruling that needs to be enforced by other courts, and may be overturned by a higher court before long. You can read more about that ruling in my earlier article at: http://bit.ly/2MxLsEU.

Now a European Court has ruled almost the opposite: internet users must ask for a photographer’s permission before posting their images online, even if the photos were already freely accessible on other websites. The court stated, “The posting on a website of a photograph that was freely accessible on another website with the consent of the author requires a new authorization by that author.”

Gramps is a FREE genealogy program originally developed for Linux and UNIX-like operating systems. However, it has since been ported to Windows and Macintosh systems as well. It is an impressive program, both intuitive for hobbyists and feature-complete for professional genealogists. Not bad for a FREE program! Gramps has thousands of users all over the world.

Gramps is a community project, created, developed and governed by genealogists. It is not developed and sold by any commercial company. Instead, you can download this program online and start using it immediately. There is no registration required, no spyware, and no invasion of your privacy. In fact, you can even download the source code yourself and examine it for any flaws or bugs. Once you are satisfied with the source code, you can compile it on your own computer. However, for those who prefer an already packaged version, you can download the executable program itself and simply start using it immediately.

The following announcement was written by the Irish Genealogical Research Society:

The Irish Genealogical Research Society is launching a new database, adding to its growing library of online resources. The database’s material is taken from a census – or statistical survey – of the Co. Tipperary town of Carrick-on-Suir. It was compiled in 1799 and notes vital biographical details about the town’s entire population; people from all walks of life, both Catholic and Protestant, numbering just under 11,000.

The original manuscript was compiled by Lieutenant-Colonel William Morton Pitt of the Dorset Militia, a member of parliament at Westminster representing Dorset constituencies from 1780 to 1826. Pitt was assisted in compiling the census by local men Francis White and Patrick Lynch. Its purpose isn’t clear, but it seems likely to be connected with Pitt’s unsuccessful attempt to gain preferment as a commissioner of the Irish union from his relative and namesake, William Pitt, the Prime Minister.

Gregg Pascal Zachary is a professor of practice in Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation. He is now talking about what you might leave behind forever, after your death. For better or for worse, everything you post online as well as everything that others post online about you might be collected in one place to represent you, forever.

Considering the drop in price of data storage hardware in the past few decades and assuming that trend continues for a long time, we can assume that every scrap of information about you can be preserved in the future for approximately the price of a postage stamp.

He has been involved in genealogy for more than 35 years. He
has worked in the computer industry for more than 40 years in hardware,
software, and managerial positions. By the early 1970s, Dick was already
using a mainframe computer to enter his family data on punch cards. He
built his first home computer in 1980.